The Bitcoin Podcast Network

The Bitcoin Podcast Network is an independent media organization since 2015. A daily collection of long form conversations, in the form of a podcasts where the world's leading thinkers and doers give us a slice of their perspective. Look for talks on Cryptocurrency, Blockchain Technology, Global Issues and much more.
Founded by Marcello Milteer, Demetrick Ferguson and Dr. Corey Petty.

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Meet Clark, an East Coast musician with a bitcoin itch that needs a scratch. As a musician, a professional musician, he has noticed the trend that musicians tend to be behind the 8-ball when it comes to technological trends. He left this talk knowing more about crypto than he did before the talk, which is the aim. Have a listen!

Lee Weiss of the US law firm BernsWeiss discusses the Coinbase/IRS dispute. The dispute began in November 2016, when the IRS summoned Coinbase to hand over data about all users who were active on the exchange from 2013 to 2015, with a view to investigating the tax compliance of individuals who have transacted in cryptocurrencies.

On behalf of one or more anonymous Coinbase users, BernsWeiss took the issue to court and was recently granted permission to argue against the summons, which among other things demanded access to users’ public and private keys. If complied with, this would effectively give the IRS access to all customer funds, making it a clear and easy target for hackers.

This is an unprecedented use of the John Doe summons procedure, which was intended for situations where the IRS has identified specific tax avoidance but can’t identify the specific parties who have engaged in that illicit conduct. If determined to be legal, this summons would set a precedent under which the IRS could demand the same from other exchanges. BernsWeiss intends to continue fighting this massive government overreach unless and until the IRS can identify a specific subset of taxpayers who it is reasonably certain are engaging in tax avoidance.

After the hearing, the government removed the request for private keys, now only requiring public keys. The IRS also voluntarily narrowed the scope of the summons to only cover individuals who engaged in virtual currency transactions in excess of $20,000 in a given year. This figure is likely arbitrary, and suggests that the government is simply trying to gather as much information as possible rather than engaging in a specific investigation.

This case illustrates the lack of understanding about these new financial instruments within government. With this summons, the IRS effectively places virtual currencies into the “inherently suspicious” tax avoidance category with things like large transactions, questionable tax shelters, and other mechanisms which are clearly designed to avoid taxes and typically don’t have a legitimate purpose — unlike cryptocurrencies.

This week we dive deep into Rivetz which secures your app with built-in hardware security, creating a decentralized & hardware-based cybersecurity ecosystem! In addition we analyze the recent Joe Rogan episode where gold bug Peter Schiff makes a fool of himself with his flibber flabber bitcoin argument. We go in!

So who is our guest this week? Steven Sprague, CEO of Rivetz Corp. and former president and CEO of Wave Systems Corp. For 14 years, is one of the principal industry evangelists for the application of trusted computing technology. Steven has a strong technical foundation in the principles, capabilities and business models of incorporating trusted hardware into everyday computing, and is skilled at translating these concepts into layman’s terms. Which is good, because a lot of this stuff goes over Marcello's head.

JP Richardson is the Chief Technical Officer of Exodus Wallet, which is quickly becoming my fav- next to Jaxx of course. In this interview JP and I shoot the shit and talk about his new Desktop wallet application Exodus. Don't get me wrong Exodus is a nice wallet, but I did have a few dislikes and JP heard em out. Some of the things I didn't agree with, most of them I understood the stance. Exodus is a noob in the space as far as the product, but the exp behind the wallet is extremely lengthy. When it comes to being your own bank, Exodus makes you the exchange as well. Buy, Trade, HODL!!!

The long awaited introduction to "Buy or Sell, What the Hell?!" This is the pilot episode of the new trading show on the network. If you like to trade then you'll like this show.

We partnered with Jason...meet Jason!

Prior to founding Jenkins Risk Management, Jason was Head of Rates Trading at CG Capital Markets. Before joining CG Capital, Jason spent almost a decade trading US Treasuries and building out a successful institutional analysis and fixed income trading business.

This week we talk about how the The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule applies to crypto. Similar distributions have been discovered in a many fields, and as a consequence, the Pareto principle has become popular among economists. Then we invite Samson Mow on the show. After all he is Blockstream’s New Chief Strategy Officer. Samson's skills and experience are exceptionally complementary to Blockstream, leveraging both his deep Bitcoin and startup expertise.

On this episode of BlockChannel, Mckie, Dee, and Petty take a trip into the crazy world of Ethereum + VR. Yeah that's right, 2017 is lit, and Decentraland is about to combine two very pivotal, innovative technologies to create a completely free, sovereign virtual reality where we can truly express ourselves; free from centralized control or potential corruption. VR is about to take over the world in a big way, what better than to blend that with another world-changing technology like Ethereum. This is powerful episode, it'll make you think. Hop on.

On this episode of BlockChannel, Mckie and Dee sit down with Tyler and Max from the Poet team. Poet aims to solve the problem content attribution, by utilizing blockchain technology (bitcoin), their service allows you to submit timestamped metadata to create an immutable timestamp of original written work/media. This will prove authenticity of a piece of written work online, and allow content creators to more effectively get credit for their hard work online.

Not to toot our own horn, but this is a great episode. Because we tackle security and with the boom of ICOs sprouting up nowadays, the tools around doing them have matured a bit, so that it's easy for people outside of the space to use them, so you’re seeing a proliferation of them because they’re much more approachable. We chat with Mushegh Hakhinian, Chief Security Architect at Synchronoss, who is an interpreter for security talk – which means he helps enterprises avoid security mistakes and translates security information into actionable advice for the technical teams. Let's get into it!

David Bailey, CEO of BTC Media, discusses the recent shutdown of BTC-eand its mysterious connection to the MtGox hack which led to the exchange’s demise in 2014. He also introduces Po.et, a revolutionary proof-of-existence blockchain platform.

The arrest of Alexander Vinnik and seizure of the BTC-e website by the FBI in late July shed some long-awaited light on the cold case of the 650,000 bitcoins which went missing from MtGox over several years from 2011 to 2013. Upon his arrest, WizSec released a comprehensive report detailing their findings on the matter, and stating that “Vinnik is [their] chief suspect for involvement in the MtGox theft (or the laundering of the proceeds thereof).” [Read more about the developing timeline of the MtGox/BTC-e connection & the lasting regulatory legacy of the hack.]

Bailey also talks about BTC Media’s partnership with Po.et, whose proof-of-existence mechanism uses hashing to allow media producers to timestamp and license their content in an unalterable system which will verify and automatically issue digital ownership. Po.et combines this timestamp with metadata about the published content to build an open ledger of media assets which includes information such as the original URL, the word count, the author’s name and the publisher.

Po.et also enables split-equity and payments terms for writers whose work is published by BTC Media, as well as different licensing agreements. Other use cases include the re-monetization of old content and individual profile management systems for employees of media outlets.

The Po.et platform will ultimately build a digital fingerprint of each author’s history and preserve their portfolio on a blockchain, revolutionizing the way in which digital content is published, leveraged and monetized.

Hey, hey, hey! Charlie Shrem in the house! This week the boys discuss Plasma. Plasma is a way to create a blockchain (as a set of smart contracts) within a blockchain, by simply committing the root hash of the "meta" child chain (Plasma) on the main chain (Ethereum). There is no doubt that some clever algorithms are being described in the plasma project. Unfortunately, because of the way this is written, the vast majority of software developers and software researchers alike are unable to separate the kool-aid from the parts that actually matter. We try and make sense of it.

Then, we open up the dialogue with Charlie about his new found love of country music and we reminisce about the Game Genie, then we realize we should probably stick to crypto-talk.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash and Tezos have been the networks that we’ve studied most extensively, given that they are truly independent systems with differentiating factors, strong teams, and very promising market opportunities. Beyond these three, Filecoin particularly intrigued us as we see it shares the aforementioned properties as well. And with the Filecoin sale coming up, I thought this was a great opportunity to share some analysis we’ve been doing on the economics so we invite some interesting people on as we dive deep into the subject.

From one Network to another Vortex visits The Bitcoin Podcast Network via Not Another Bitcoin Podcast. Himself coming from the World Crypto Network, on Youtube. Vortex knows his shit, especially when it comes to crypto and the future's potential to flourish thanks to blockchain technology. In this interview we get to talk about past, present and the future of bitcoin and blockchains like altcoins. Vortex explains this current fork and the likely next fork in Nov. (2M block size hardfork) Even goes into details about all the benefits SegWit brings to the table like Atomic Swap and many others. This is my most informational interview yet! You don't wanna miss this diamond on the blockchain.

This is a very special ORWD! Dee gets to talk with his brother about Bitcoin. After initially showing Nathan Bitcoin in 2013...4 years later, not only has Nathan purchased, but his curiosity is almost more than his reservation for Bitcoin. He's appreciated the gains in his money pots, but yearns to take nibbles of all that is crypto and learn about this paradigm shifting platform. Enjoy...this is a jazzy talk!

This week we are Planeteers because we are going to chat about renewable energy technologies. You see, generating electricity from renewable energy rather than fossil fuels offers significant public health benefits. But there are barriers. This chicken-and-egg problem is especially difficult with technologies that have long lives. Enter...PowerLedger. They allow renewable energy asset owners to decide who they want to sell their surplus energy to and at what price. Using blockchain technology, they provide a transparent, auditable and automated market trading and clearing mechanism for the benefit of producers and consumers.

Luka Müller and Dianne Schepers of MME — the Swiss law firm famous for running the Ethereum crowdsale — discuss jurisdictional constraints, Crypto Valley, novel crypto-asset classes and the “second wave” of tokenization.

With 25 previous “token generating events” and 60 pending projects, MME is a clear leader in the crypto law realm. The firm is now welcoming a “second wave” of clients; companies from the legacy economy which are seeking ways to enter the blockchain world through tokenizing their pre-existing equity.

In this discussion Luka outlines some of the major distinctions between US and Swiss law in relation to token issuance, looking at securities law, donations, and the commonly used foundation model. These and other regulatory differences, compounded by the stable and already-decentralized nature of Swiss government, make Switzerland the ideal jurisdiction for Crypto Valley, the rapidly growing successor to Silicon Valley based in Zug, a financial center.

Alongside its long list of clients, MME is now focussed on creating Blockchain Crypto Property (BCP) standards. The final BCP paper, to be published in August, will classify tokens under a range of asset classes and outline a quality checklist for various token models. These standards will simplify risk assessment and ensure that tokens issued in Switzerland will be globally listable and tradeable.

This mid-week episode we discuss the breaking news of Coinbase deciding to add support for Bitcoin Cash by January 1, 2018 - Funding customer wallets with the BCH they had at the fork. Also, we dive into financial literacy and why it is important. In addition, Rodolfo Novak joins us as the CEO of CoinKite to discuss a variety of topics. As a Product designer and strategist, having fun with branding and growth hacking, Coinkite is here to become the leading bitcoin wallet with multi-signature bank-grade security, developer's API, and hardcore privacy.

I invite the main host Cello of The Bitcoin Podcast Network on my show to speak on Common Misconceptions About Bitcoin. Starting from the basics and working our way to the more difficult misconceptions, Cello helps break down the mental barriers around the traditional thought processes these PABs bring into the crypto space with them. This show is for the newbies and for the vets. It has a little something something for everyone. So press download or hit the stream button, either way tune in and get the update on bitcoin conceptions.